1. Field of the Inventive Concept
The present general inventive concept relates to a method of coding and decoding audio signals, and more particularly, to a method of lossless coding and decoding.
2. Description of the Related Art
Coding refers to converting an audio signal into a digital bitstream, and decoding refers to converting the digital bitstream into the audio signal. The decoding operation may be the opposite of the coding operation.
The coding of the audio signal may include estimating attributes of the audio signal, quantizing the estimated attributes, and lossless coding of the quantized sample or symbol.
The estimating of the attributes of the audio signal may be performed by converting an audio signal in a time domain into a spectrum component in a frequency domain.
During the course of the quantizing of the estimated attribute, a portion of the audio signal information may be lost. As the loss of the audio signal information increases, it may be more difficult to restore an original audio signal via the coding and decoding operations.
To easily perform a signal processing with respect to the quantized sample or symbol, the sample or symbol may be converted into a bitstream. In this instance, an operation of converting information included in the sample or symbol into a bitstream without losses refers to lossless coding, and decoding the sample or symbol without losses from the bitstream refers to lossless decoding.